Palm's Pre commercials are horrible

We love you Palm, we really do. WebOS is in a small club of mobile platforms that is as versatile and visually pleasing as it is powerful and it has all the potential in the world… If Palm can manage to sell the handsets that it powers. We still don’t know how many Pres have been sold and analyst guesses range from 200,000 to 500,000 and beyond. What we do know however, is that Palm isn’t doing itself any favors with its faux esoteric, new age TV ads starring a mescaline-addicted albino woman. Love the Pre or hate it, do these commercials really want to make anyone run out and buy a Pre? Palm’s latest ad has this creepy lady babbling over an Ulrich Schnauss track about how her phone can read her mind and how people think she’s crazy. The Palm Pre — you know, the phone they’re trying to sell here — doesn’t even make an appearance until 22 seconds into this 30 second spot. Right. We get the point you’re trying to make, Palm, but we don’t walk away from this ad thinking, “Wow, I really want to buy a Pre because it’s remarkably intuitive and I don’t follow the herd!” No, we walk away thinking, “Wow, this chick needs an intervention.” Hit the jump to check out the commercial and hit Palm execs in the head for letting an ad agency convince them that this run was a good idea.

Here’s Apple’s branding gameplan:
1.) Appeal to a buyer’s emotions.
2.) Find one thing you can do better than the competition and DO IT.
3.) Turn your customers into evangelists.
4.) Have a story and keep it simple.
5.) Create an experience.

Most brands have more or less the same type of game plans as well. How well they execute on them is a topic for endless debate.

Some do it better than others and just because Apple is more single-minded about how they express that, doesn’t mean that they are ‘right’ since it depends on what you want to accomplish as a company.

There are tons marketing industry experts out there, as well as plenty of us ad guys in the trenches, who know that Apple could easily expand it’s market share by segmenting more and appealing to more people. But they choose not to, which I applaud. Good for them. It’s a rare quality these days. It keeps their brand pure and tribal which is very cool. But by the same token, it also keeps their profitability locked tightly in a cage as well.

So the question isn’t so much about ‘one size fits all’ for Apple. It’s more about how it’s ‘one size fits you.’ There are millions and millions of people which find Apple a poor fit indeed (personally, I think I’d break out in hives if I had to work on a PC).

But most companies want to make as much money as possible. That’s why they exist. So their brands don’t have the luxury of sitting back and only appealing to a niche market. Especially not Palm. It wants to go big and thus doesn’t even want to compete with the iPod in the minds of consumers and IT managers so much as much as it wants to compete with Blackberry and Power business users. That’s why they’re also licensing Verizon next year and making big updates for businesses.

And no, being smart doesn’t equate to being right, of course, but it helps. And in this particular case, I do think Modernista! is right. Of course, that’s just MY opinion, to which I’m entitled as well as everyone else is entitled to theirs.

And another opinion? The whole U2 thing just strikes me as safer yes, but also so far afield from where THEIR brand is, that it strikes me as too shilly (‘Look at how much we paid these guys to do a commercial for us! So now we’re cool!’) It’s like they just paid Bono and the boys a ton of money for their endorsement which is the worst way of going.

I’ve done many commercials with celebrity spokesmen that have NOTHING to do with the brand but alas, decisions like that are above my pay grade.

Who knows, I haven’t thought about the Bono Blackberry too much, but it just doesn’t feel like a good, natural fit. Especially since I think most people associate them with Apple (remember the personalized U2 iPod with their signatures etched on the back?).

I spent years trying to force a fit between Tiger Woods and Buick and it just never really gelled in the marketplace, which is kind of how I feel about U2 and Blackberry.

Oy, I’m tired.

Peace out.

whoster69

Yeah their commercials are horrible. I really want to like the Pre (partly because I hate all the religious BS around the iPhony) but this really doesn’t help.

pyrex

here is a nice response from one of their earlier commercials.

Hadtothinkupaname

I like the ads, a lot !

Jose

Well, sorry guys, but I like the commercial. I find it intelligent and well done, and to me, effective. I am a 6’5″, 220lbs. m$&^er f*&%er engineer with a beard, so I must be their target audience…

Tyrone D.

“TV ads starring a mescaline-addicted albino woman”…lmao

I would still buy it because I know a lot about the device and OS but the commercial definitely don’t make me drop what I’m doing and go to a Sprint store to get one.

teesquared

hey now!!! i actually like this commercial

knightquest

Who ever the woman is that they got to play on these comercials is freeking nuts. Not to mention just down right unatractive. What were they thinking?

B Rio

My girlfriend and I saw this thing the other night and were like “this is the worst commercial we’ve seen in a while” and you barely even know what it’s for.

Jared

Yeah i’m pretty sure it’s one of the twins from antm also. I thought that as soon as I saw it.

carly

I HATE HER TOO. THis is the ONLY COMMERCIAL I HAVE EVER REALLY HATED. I feel like this woman is somet kind of creepy alien! I have been complaining to my boyfriend about her for months. Now I see that there are thousands of people like me!

todd

She’s hot as hell you all have horrible taste. Much better looking than eva longoria or whatever shade of brown is typically in vogue these days.

Cherry Carver

Whenever it was that this ad started running in my area, I had to look away from the TV or change the channel. If “creepy” is the buzz word Palm Pre wanted associated with their device, they have succeeded beyond their wildest nightmares. I only found out the name of the product so I could tell somebody how much I hate these commercials, and that I wouldn’t accept even a free product from the manufacturer. I want to like the companies I buy products from, but this company has literally scared me away. Somebody could make a horror flick about the woman in this ad coming to people’s homes and invading their lives with her expressionless face, monotonous voice and lack of affect…man, I would never stop screaming.

DP

Who is the beautiful woman in the commercial walking along with the Pre screen out in front of her? That is dynamite.